Patches and Past-Lives

Posted on 13 Sep 2012 @ 6:22pm by Commander Andreus Kohl & Commander Scarlet Blake
Edited on on 13 Sep 2012 @ 6:22pm

2,437 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Sickbay
Timeline: MD 09 - 1638 hours

[ON]

Scarlet tried to stretch her body out even as she walked through the doors of Sickbay, grimacing at the pull of pain in her side. She'd done her best to patch herself up, but she wasn't sure it had fixed her particularly well.

It had been difficult for all of them during the battle. Being stabbed in the side by a Klingon's knife wasn't fun. Getting to Sickbay to find it over run and having to pitch in and lend a hand to patch other people up after the battle without time to get her own injury treated hadn't been fun either.

It was only after the rush of patients had been stabilised that she'd found time to look at the worst of her wounds, but she'd had to patch the knife wound up herself with the overwhelming patient numbers...and she wasn't a doctor or a nurse. She was a counsellor who had field medic training back in her marine years.

And it was still hurting. She sighed, rubbing over the area as she glanced around. Lifting Lily umpteen times a day didn't help on it, and she'd finally decided to come and get it checked by someone who could look at it properly.

Scarlet spotted a nurse, making her way over with a half smile. "I don't suppose you have a free session do you?"

"For medical staff, I drop everything else I'm doing," said Andreus Kohl in reply. The fair-haired Argelian was sporting a 1700 hours shadow on his face, and he wore a blue medical smock over his uniform. He was adjusting the nutrition pack plugged into the biobed of an Andorian patient who was still being fed intravenously. "But don't feel guilty," Kohl said blithely, "I was just finishing my rounds anyway."

"Well then I feel even more guilty, you should escape while you have a chance," Scarlet laughed softly, shaking her head as she watched him with interest. "You are the nurse who was running around like a machine after the battle."

Kohl looked up from the biobed controls to remark, "I don't recall being alone in that marathon. You were more than keeping apace." Kohl dropped his tricorder into the holster on his hip and he padded closer to where Scarlet was standing at the foot of the biobed. Kohl enthused, "What can I help you with?"

"I may have patched up a wound after that marathon, and I may not have done the best of jobs at it," she gave him a half smile, as if she was fully aware that it had to sound particularly rubbish. "I had a lot on," she added, as if that could make it better. "I was hoping you could take a look for me, check if it needs more work? I lift my girl about a thousand times a day and it's getting a bit much."

"Of course, I will. That's the only reason they let me aboard," Kohl said. He gestured to the surgical biobed with one hand. It was being kept empty in case of emergency cases, but that mean it was free and available for use now. He asked Scarlet, "Can you show me where it hurts?"

She pulled herself up to sit, pulling her uniform jacket off before motioning to her side. "One of the Klingons got me with a knife in Engineering. Fun times."

Kohl smiled weakly at Scarlet's flippant response, but his hands were already on her uniform tunic. He lifted it up at the side she had indicated, and his eyes studied the skin revealed there. Kohl couldn't see any sign of where a laceration had been --the dermis had been healed smoothly-- but there was a small reddish blotch that wasn't entirely consistent with bruising. "Ohh," Kohl said as evenly as he could muster. He looked up in Scarlet's eyes as he fiddled a bit with the edge of the tunic. "Do you mind holding that up?"

"Sure," she held it, watching him with blue eyes that were strangely curious, but also taking in his reaction. "I'm a counsellor. My medical training is limited to field medic," she somehow felt the need to explain to the man. A nurse, who was skilled at what he did. "And it's a hard angle to see," she added, but with a touch of playfulness and a smile at that.

At first, Kohl continued his assessment in silence. He touched the redness with the pads of his fingers, checking for any difference between that area and the healthy tissue around it. Then, he palmed his tricorder and linked it to the overhead sensor clusters. Scanning the area of the redness, he ran a polymerase chain reaction assay and trained the sensors on the RNA sequences to be found where the wound used to be. Based on his budding theory, Kohl looked up from his tricorder to return a playful smile. "Oh no, no explanations needed," Kohl insisted. "You patched yourself up skillfully. But, uhm, how much time passed between the injury and your treatment?"

"Gosh," she sighed as she arched an eyebrow, clearly trying to think back over what had been a bit of a blur in time over the battle. "I staunched the blood flow pretty quick after, but I didn't get to give a proper patch up till at least 5 hours? Maybe a bit longer. You were there, it was chaos in here."

Meeting her eyes, Kohl nodded to agree the term 'chaos' best described their working environment following the intruder alert. He looked at his tricorder again to review the results of sensor test results, and then he looked up. Kohl said, "In that time, it looks like the wound became infected."

Scarlet sighed and shook her head with annoyance. "Son of a bitch," she breathed on a hiss, clearly frustrated with herself. "Still, at least that should be straight forward."

"Your body should be able to fight it off," Kohl said in agreement. He regarded the screen on the tricorder as it identified the bacteria responsible for the infection. Tapping through the on-screen menus, Kohl researched the standard practice guidelines for treatment. As he did so, he said, "I can prescribe something to help it along."

"I'd be grateful," she admitted with a small smile, watching him work. "Between work and my girl, I don't really have time to take it easy. I'm sure you know what it's like," she chuckled at that. A nurse in a small medical team? She really was sure of it.

Kohl shook his head good-naturedly. "No, I don't know what that's like. Not that exactly. I have no children, nor a partner," he said, and managed to do so without anything like self-pity. He looked away from Scarlet, looked anywhere but her eyes, until his gaze found his tricorder once again. Sounding embarrassed this time, he said, "Nor any friends, really." But he looked up and his manner brightened, as he went on: "I'm told raising a child is like another full-time career. When I leave this room, I can take off my uniform and go to bed. I'm not sure you have that same option."

"Not really," Scarlet laughed softly at that, shaking her head. "But it can be rewarding too. I can't believe you don't have any friends. That can't be right. And if it is, it should be remedied immediately," she said firmly, but she smiled almost playfully with it. "We could all be together here for a long time."

"It's a new crew for me. For both of us. Starfleet has us starting new so often, 'new' starts to feel familiar," Kohl said. His smiled turned uncertain. He returned the tricorder to its holster and folded his arms across his chest. "I've been getting to know the crew who came over on the shuttle with us, like Luca. And my roommate turned out to be Aria."

"Aria?" she said with surprise before laughing softly, nodding as she watched him. "Well she's certainly a friendly sort. I think Lily is enamoured with her already. Have you noticed her energy? Her cheerfulness is infectious," she smiled warmly to him. It was an odd thing to think on. The serious nurse with the bouncy security girl. "I don't have a roommate. Well, sort of, I obviously have Lily. It might make me sound like an irresponsible parent, but, well, I do miss having a bar to unwind in."

Stepping only as far away as the nearest medicine cabinet, Kohl unlocked the panel and picked out a couple of hypospray cartridges. Clutching them in one hand, he returned to Scarlet's biobed. When Scarlet asked him about Aria's cheery nature, Kohl nodded enthusiastically and let out a chuckle. He dropped the cartridges on an instrument tray as he moved closer to Scarlet. "I could murder a bottle of Argelian whiskey," Kohl said in a conspiratorial undertone. "The lack of a bar on a Nova-class is a criminal design flaw."

She laughed softly with him, nodding as she met his eyes, sharing in the conspiracy. "I'll have to remember that. Argelian whiskey. I've never tried it. I'll have to give it a go. Give me a good cocktail anyday, any number of bad things all mixed together has to be good, hm?"

"I try to live by that creed," Kohl remarked, with a wicked smirk. He moved over to the instrument tray beside the biobed and clasped a hypsopray between his fingers. Evening out his tone, Kohl asked, "Do you recall if you have any allergies to medications?"

"None that I know of, or have been found yet," she glanced to him, humour playing in her blue eyes. "Maybe you'll be the lucky one to find something that lights me up," she teased before shaking her head with a chuckle. "Don't worry. I've had a lot of meds and treatment in my time. I'm pretty straight forward and boring."

"Are you sure you don't have a fever?" Kohl asked with pantomime concern. He raised a hyposrpay loaded with corophizine, and injected a dosage into a vein in Scarlet's neck. "Because I can't imagine why else the marine counsellor would call herself boring."

Scarlet couldn't help but laugh at that, shaking her head as she watched him with shining eyes. "Not a marine anymore. Just a regular 'fleeter, like you. Same rank and all now. I couldn't exactly see bringing up Lily in the marines," she winked to him.

Kohl ejected the cartridge from the hypospray, and set both down on the instrument tray beside the biobed. He took up his tricorder and began another scan of Scarlet. In tandem, he asked a probing question: "You became a commission officer as soon as you had her?"

"Almost," Scarlet admitted with a half smile, tilting her head as she watched him. "I'd been a Captain in the marines. I was a new mother while doing my retraining for Starfleet. And luckily I managed to graduate, and here I am as an Ensign. You seem young enough to have been a Starfleeter from the start. Of your career, that is."

"Yes, I went directly from school on Areglius to Starfleet Academy," Kohl said. He nodded, but there was something guarded about his half-lidded eyes and the way he spoke. Knowing that Scarlet was a counsellor, and none of his peers were within earshot, Kohl opened up more quickly than he normally might have done. He said, "But I'm not that young. I wasn't always a nurse. I began in diplomacy and restarted my career. I've made enough mistakes to delay my promotion schedule."

"You have a schedule? That's impressive enough," she replied with an arched eyebrow and a knowing smile. "A diplomat, hm? An interesting career. But pretty different from Nursing," she said lightly. It was phrased as a question, but it was casual enough to be taken as a statement if he preferred.

Stepping away from the biobed momentarily, Kohl locked away the hypospray cartridges. When he returned, he was carrying a sterilizer field generator. He waved it over the hypsospray he had used on Scarlet. Having broken the flow of the conversation, Kohl took some advantage of the indirect question to vague-up his response. He said, "Diplomacy was cerebral. Too cerebral for my own temperament" --He nodded wryly to the counsellor-- "perhaps not for everyone's temperament, but for my own. In nursing, I relish the opportunity to work with my hands every day."

"It suits you," she nodded in agreement, smiling, as if it were an easy thing to see in him. "It's always brave to start again. Change direction. I'm glad it's brought you here, succeeding in something you wanted."

"What do you think brought you to Galileo? Something you wanted?'" Kohl asked. There was something yearning in the way he asked it. Like he didn't know what answer to expect, but he hoped it would teach him something new about Scarlet, but also about people in general, and about himself.

"Me?" she gave a small smile at that, holding his eyes. "It was a place where Lily and me could be together, while I was still some kind of useful artefact in this universe," she chuckled softly, searching his eyes. "What about you," she returned the question, softly.

"Oh, I was given transfer orders. No choice of my own," Kohl answered easily. He clasped a tricorder between both hands, and began another series of medical scans. "It's contradictory, almost. I loved my last posting. Good people, meaningful work, not too much time for reflection. But... I was relieved to leave it behind. There's something refreshing about starting new, even if you're only leaving behind all your old problems to create brand new ones."

"I suppose we just hope we learnt some kind of lesson from the first problems, to limit the amount of new ones we make," Scarlet gave him an understanding smile at that. "Doesn't quite work though, does it. Still, something from the past doesn't have to dictate your future. We career changes know that, right?" her eyes shone with a touch of humour as she smiled to him. She had a habit, some might call it bad, of looking at life with humour where possible. Sometimes very dark humour, but humour all the same.

Sharing that particular brand of humour, Kohl nodded, as he deactivated his tricorder and the sensor cluster. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, and he said, "We can certainly live in that hope."


[OFF]



Ensign Scarlet Blake
Counsellor
USS Galileo

Ensign Andreus Kohl
Nurse
USS Galileo

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